Judge reverses decision to restrict media in reporting on confession in child's attack at Best Buy

The right of the press to be free is irresistible and “embedded into the very DNA of our republic,” ruled Jacksonville Circuit Judge Adrian G. Soud who ended his two-week ban against media reporting a confession in an attempted murder case.

On Aug. 23, Best Buy employees barged into the women’s restroom on the Southside and found a man holding the head of a 9-year-old girl in a toilet. Blood, according to police, was everywhere.

After the girl was rescued, 29-year-old James Patrick Tadros of St. Johns County was charged with attempted murder, false imprisonment and criminal mischief. In his arrest report, two paragraphs that contained a confession with details on how he said he lured the girl into the restroom were blacked out.

The Florida Times-Union’s general policy is to not publish suspects’ confessions to the police.

WJXT TV-4 got a hold of the arrest report without those paragraphs blacked out. A newsroom assignment manager informed the State Attorney’s Office he planned to lead the Aug. 28 evening newscast with it. About an hour before the scheduled broadcast, an emergency hearing was held in Soud’s courtroom and Soud restrained the TV station from broadcasting the report so he could consider the case.

Though station representatives said it wasn’t their intent, a copy of the report appeared on screen that night with one of the paragraphs briefly visible. Soud then ordered all local media not to use the restricted details but decided not to hold the TV station in contempt writing that “employees of WJXT TV-4, as human beings do at times, made a mistake.”

Lawyers for the Times-Union, First Coast News, WTEV TV-47 and WJXT TV-4 argued on Monday the restraint was unconstitutional.

When Soud issued an order Wednesday ending the restraint, Tim Conner, attorney for the Times-Union and First Coast News, said he was glad the judge “carefully considered the issues that were put in front of him and came to the right result.”

Though Assistant State Attorney Lisa DiFranza argued WJXT’s attorney Ed Birk violated the clerk of courts website user agreement by sharing the full arrest report, Soud found Birk had not broken any law or court order.

“My client and I, from the start, were careful to consider whether me giving the unredacted report to the client would be some kind of violation,” Birk said. “We concluded it would not be any sort of violation, and ... I appreciate the court’s conclusion.”

Soud wrote: “In its responsibility to ensure the defendant’s impenetrable constitutional right to a fair trial, is the court legally permitted to restrain the media from broadcasting or publishing information it has already obtained through not-unlawful means? To be clear, the question before the court is not if the public will learn of the contested information, but simply when.”

Alternatives must be considered before media outlets can be restrained, and Soud said that “there are other arrows in the quiver of this court available to ensure and protect the defendant’s right to a public and speedy trial before an impartial jury.”

Soud said if any media outlet publishes the information, it risks hurting Tadros’ right to a fair trial. But, he also wrote, “time will tell.”

Even from the beginning, Birk said, the station hadn’t planned on using all of the paragraphs but just certain details. In its Wednesday broadcast, a newsman explained he hoped viewers would use the information to protect themselves.

Alternatives to restraint include moving the trial to another location, postponing the trial so people forget, screening jurors and instructing them to decide Tadros’ case only based on the information presented in court.

Rod Sullivan, professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law, had said it’s the responsibility of Duval County Clerk of Courts Ronnie Fussell’s office to ensure the documents are redacted, not the responsibility of the media to withhold information.

“When something happens like this, you can't just say, ‘Oh, well,’ ” Fussell said. He said he has warned the deputy clerk responsible, and “it'll be in the forefront of everyone's mind going forward.”

Fussell’s spokesman, Charlie Broward, said Monday this is the first time since he started working in the office this year that he’s heard of records that were mistakenly not redacted.